Divorce and/or single-parenthood is simply a fork in the road of life, a new direction which must be taken slowly and with caution, not accepted as a life-altering traumatic detour.
             Statistics do not tell the whole story, people do. Although it is undeniable that the divorce rate is staggering in the U.S. and that single parents head one-third of all American families, I think that single parents should be applauded, not condemned. I also believe the negative effects of divorce on children is distorted and the positive effects ignored.
             In the 1940s, divorce was a term seldom used and an alternative to marriage rarely exercised. As noted by Joseph Adelson in Splitting Up, " . . . in the 1940's, 14 percent [of white women] divorced; of those married in the late 1960's and early 1970's half are already divorced, and today there is a 60-40 chance that a marriage will end in divorce" (Adelson ___). Judith Wallerstein added in The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce " . . . [t]hat 80 percent of divorces occur in the first nine years of marriage" (Wallerstein 74). What a difference from the 1950s, when "[p]eople stayed married forever back then . . ." and "[w]e ignored desperate marriages and piercing loneliness" (Hoffman 57).
             There was a time when divorce was considered to be a taboo and divorcees were ostracized by society and abandoned by their friends. Children of divorce were thought to lack proper parenting, to have such unconventional lifestyles that they too were looked down upon and rejected by society. There were no support groups, no one to offer comfort or advice. People were left on their own to try to figure out how to put what was left of their family back together.
             The "ideal family" is not a term that I am personally familiar with, having been raised by a single mother from the age of five, to becoming a single mother myself, by choice, 16 years ago. ...